Breathe life, Holy Spirit

Leonid  (Lyonya) Novikov, the main speaker at this year’s Winter Bible Conference, made a very powerful point that will stick with me for a long time.  He was speaking from Ps.100:3 where God says that it is He who made us – we did not make ourselves.  Because He is our Creator, He is also our Master and Lord and He is the One who directs what we do with our lives.  Our response to God should always be, ‘how do I align myself according to His purposes?’  He is King and I live to serve Him.

At the end of his first talk, Lyonya gave each one of us a piece of clay and told us to fashion a person.  We were to bring back our ‘person’ to the next talk.  It was interesting to watch how every one of us went to work fashioning our person!  There were some extremely gifted sculptors at the conference. .. I was very impressed.

The following night, Lyonya continued to speak about God being the Creator, Owner, King of our lives and how we are the created, we are made to serve His purpose.   He had us take our masterpiece, our ‘creation’ and hold it up.  Lyonya then commanded us to breathe life into the person we made with our own hands.  People started laughing at the ridiculousness of the idea that we could breathe life into our clay figures!  I admit that I even attempted it just to remind myself that only God can create life and I am totally incapable of turning something I made into a living being.

The point was so visual and so powerful that it led me to thinking about other ways this could be applied in my life.  I thought about how, when I feel confident in my abilities to do something, I forget to do things in God’s power and rely instead on my own strength and wisdom to serve Him.  I thought about how relying on myself rather than on God is like me trying to breathe life into a plan or a strategy or activity.  When I pictured myself trying to blow the breath of life into my clay person, I made myself visualize trying to blow life into a plan or activity “in service to God” but done in my own strength.  When I’m doing that activity in my own power, I am unable to give that activity eternal value or impact.  But when we’re filled with the Holy Spirit and relying on God’s wisdom and power, then it’s He who breathes life into our strategies and plans – only He is able to do that.

So how do you allow God to breathe life into your service to Him?  The Holy Spirit booklet explains just how to allow Him to empower you, to blow His life into the plans He has given you to bring the good news to your campus.